563. With our trim-ancied lasses and light-slung flasks Between Il. 593, 594 the MS. inserts, and deletes:

Dreams! O my Nature, if such fiends can haunt

Misery's sleep, what must intemperate guilt's be!

·

P. 889. The Choice'. Two fragments from this were included in 1832 (lines 1-9 from 1823; 10-31 new), entitled as below:

I HAVE been reading Pomfret's Choice' this spring,

A pretty kind of sort of kind of thing;

Not much a verse, and poem none at all,

Yet, as they say, extremely natural.

In raising crusts as well as galleries;

And he's the poet, more or less, who knows

And yet I know not. There's a skill in pies,

The Charm that hallows the least truth from prose,

And dresses it in its mild singing clothes.
Not oaks alone are trees, nor roses flowers;

ΙΟ

Much humble wealth makes rich this world of ours.
Nature from some sweet energy throws up
Alike the pine-mount and the buttercup,

And truth she makes so precious, that to paint
Either, shall shrine an artist like a Saint,

And bring him in his turn the crowds that press
Round Guido's saints, or Titian's goddesses.

Our trivial poet hit upon a theme

Which all men love, an old, sweet household dream,
Such as comes true with some, and might with all,
Were liberty to build her wisest hall,
Though to the loss of, here and there, a wall:
For call the building by some handsome name,
College, or square, not parallelogram,

And who would scorn to pass consummate hours,
Bless'd against care and want, in reverend bowers,
With just enough of toil to sweeten ease,

And music, ringing through their evening trees?
I own I shouldn't: I could even bear

To some majestic table to repair,

And dine for three-pence on luxurious fare.

A HOUSE AND GROUNDS

A FRAGMENT

20

30

[The line-numbers in square brackets indicate the corresponding lines in, 1823.]

WERE this impossible, I know full well

*

What sort of house should grace my garden-bell,-
A good, old country lodge, half hid with blooms
Of honied green, and quaint with straggling rooms,
A few of which, white-bedded and well swept,

For friends, whose names endear'd them, should be kept.
Of brick I'd have it, far more broad than high,
With green up to the door, and elm trees nigh;
And the warm sun should have it in his eye.
The tiptoe traveller, peeping through the boughs
O'er my low wall, should bless the pleasant house,
And that my luck might not seem ill-bestow'd,
A bench and spring should greet him on the road.

[104]

[107]

10 [58]

My grounds should not be large; I like to go
To Nature for a range, and prospect too,
And cannot fancy she'll comprise for me,
Even in a park, her all-sufficiency.

Besides, my thoughts fly far; and when at rest,
Love, not a watch-tower, but a lulling nest.
But all the ground I had should keep a look
Of Nature still, have birds'-nests and a brook;
One spot for flowers, the rest all turf and trees;
For I'd not grow my own bad lettuces.
I'd build a walk, however, against rain,
Long, peradventure, as my whole domain,
And so be sure of generous exercise,

The youth of age, and med'cine of the wise.
And this reminds me, that behind some screen
About my grounds, I'd have a bowling-green;
Such as in wits' and merry women's days
Suckling preferred before his walk of bays.
You may still see them, dead as haunts of fairies,
By the old seats of Killigrews and Careys,
Where all, alas, is vanished from the ring,
Wits and black eyes, the skittles and the king!1

20

[71]

[149]

30

[158]

A shorter version of the poem was included in 1844, 1857, 1860, entitled as below (11. 52, 53 are peculiar to 1860. The line-numbers in square brackets indicate the corresponding lines in 1823):

A THOUGHT OR TWO ON READING POMFRET'S CHOICE'

Choice' this spring

I HAVE been reading Pomfret's
A pretty kind of-sort of-kind of thing,
Not much a verse, and poem none at all,
Yet, as they say, extremely natural.
And yet I know not. There's an art in pies,
In raising crusts as well as galleries;

And he's the poet, more or less, who knows

The charm that hallows the least truth from prose,
And dresses it in its mild singing clothes.
Not oaks alone are trees, nor roses flowers;

ΙΟ

[9]

Much humble wealth makes rich this world of ours.

1 Bowls are now thought vulgar: that is to say, a certain number of fine vulgar people agree to call them so. The fashion was once otherwise. Suckling prefers

A pair of black eyes, or a lucky hit

At bowls, above all the trophies of wit.

Piccadilly, in Clarendon's time,' was a fair house of entertainment and gaming, with handsome gravel walks for shade, and where were an upper and a lower bowling-green, whither very many of the nobility and gentry of the best quality resorted, both for exercise and conversation '.-Hist. of the Rebellion, vol. ii. It was to the members of Parliament what the merely indoor club-houses are now, and was a much better place for them to refresh their faculties in. The robust intellects of the Commonwealth grew there, and the airy wit that succeeded them. [H.]

Our trivial poet hit upon a theme
Which all men love, an old, sweet household dream :-
Pray, reader, what is yours?-I know full well
What sort of home should grace my garden-bell,-
No tall, half-furnish'd, gloomy, shivering house,
That worst of mountains labouring with a mouse;
Nor should I choose to fill a tawdry niche in
A Grecian temple, opening to a kitchen.
The frogs in Homer should have had such boxes,
Or Esop's frog, whose heart was like the ox's.
Such puff about high roads, so grand, so small,
With wings and what not, portico and all,
And poor drench'd pillars, which it seems a sin
Not to mat up at night-time, or take in.
I'd live in none of those. Nor would I have
Veranda'd windows to forestall my grave;
Veranda'd truly, from the northern heat!

And cut down to the floor to comfort one's cold feet!

My house should be of brick, more wide than high,

With sward up to the path, and elm-trees nigh;
A good old country lodge, half hid with blooms
Of honied green, and quaint with straggling rooms,
A few of which, white-bedded and well swept,
For friends, whose name endear'd them, should be kept.
The tip-toe traveller, peeping through the boughs
O'er my low wall, should bless the pleasant house :
And that my luck might not seem ill-bestow'd,
A bench and spring should greet him on the road.

My grounds should not be large. I like to go
To Nature for a range, and prospect too,
And cannot fancy she'd comprise for me,
Even in a park, her all-sufficiency.
Besides, my thoughts fly far; and when at rest,
Love, not a watch-tow'r, but a lulling nest.
A Chiswick or a Chatsworth might, I grant,
Visit my dreams with an ambitious want;
But then I should be forced to know the weight
Of splendid cares, new to my former state;
And these 'twould far more fit me to admire,
Borne by the graceful ease of noblest Devonshire.
Such grounds, however, as I had, should look

Like something' still; have seats, and walks, and brook;

One spot for flowers, the rest all turf and trees;

60

1 own I cannot see my right to feel

For my own jaws, and tear a trout's with steel;
To troll him here and there, and spike, and strain,
And let him loose to jerk him back again.
Fancy a preacher at this sort of work,

Not with his trout or gudgeon, but his clerk:
The clerk leaps gaping at a tempting bit,
And, hah! an ear-ache with a knife in it!
That there is pain and evil, is no rule
That I should make it greater, like a fool;
Or rid me of my rust so vile a way,

80

As long as there's a single manly play.

Nay, fool's a word my pen unjustly writes,

[186] 90

Knowing what hearts and brains have dozed o'er 'bites';

[181]

But the next inference to be drawn might be,
That higher beings made a trout of me;
Which I would rather should not be the case,
Though Izaak were the saint to tear my face,
And, stooping from his heaven with rod and line,
Made the fell sport, with his old dreams divine,
As pleasant to his taste, as rough to mine.
Such sophistry, no doubt, saves half the hell,
But fish would have preferr'd his reasoning well,
And, if my gills concern'd him, so should I.
The dog, I grant, is in that equal sky';
But, heav'n be prais'd, he's not my deity.
All manly games I'd play at,-golf and quoits,
And cricket, to set lungs and limbs to rights,
And make me conscious, with a due respect,
Of muscles one forgets by long neglect.

With these, or bowls aforesaid, and a ride,
Books, music, friends, the day would I divide,
Most with my family, but when alone,
Absorb'd in some new poem of my own;
A task which makes my time so richly pass,

So like a sunshine cast through painted glass.

(Save where poor Captain Sword crashes the panes,)
That could my friends live too, and were the gains

Of toiling men but freed from sordid fears,
Well could I walk this earth a thousand years.

P. 363. Doggrel on Double Columns.

100

[196]

ΙΙΟ

91. A jeu d'esprit recorded of divers colonnades; among others, that which screened the late Carlton House. It may be thus translated:

How came you here, good columns, pray ?

'Faith, my good friend, we cannot say. [H. 1837.]

P. 371. Three Visions.

44. The late king of Prussia, who, when he came to England, was accompanied by his friend Alexander von Humboldt. [H. 1860.]

P. 373. By the kindness of Mr. Trevor Leigh-Hunt, I am enabled to print these further album-verses:

A RHYME FOR THE ALBUM OF [ ] LEE

Go, thou little rhyme in E
Twittering, bird-like, o'er the sea,
Go and half in rhyming glee,
Yet all, at heart, in kindest key,
Join the Album-galaxy,
Or rather Inky-dstroxy,

Of a certain lovely she,

Christian name unknown, but 'Lee'
Speaketh her high ancestry;
Prettiest girl (so rare F. B.
Told her gallant brother P.)
In a land which all agree,

Is famed for pretty-girlery.
(Let me coin this word, O ye,
Who love a fair neology.)

Yes, but not thy charms, Ladiè,
Oval face, nor affluence free

Of fairest looks, nor gently brea-
thing finest bust, draw thus from me
E'en this (would-be ?) jeu d'esprit;
But the brother's love, which he,
Rare book-fighter 'gainst ennui,
Lord of sore captivity,
Who in spite of agony
Thinks of others, and (D.V.)
Shall yet walk forth invincibly,

Shew'd for thy desire, and thee.

March-Year One, Eight, Five, Twice

Three

From the Hunt yclepèd Leigh.

PS. Leigh's no rhyme, you see, with
Lee,

Therefore I put it separately

With these other ends in lee.

'Tis repetition. And yet Lee

And Leigh, methinks, sound pleasantly,
Thus join'd-tauto-melodiously-

Unisonous-harmoniously-
Anglo-Americano-ly.

That is to say provided Leigh
Say it not too presumptuously
Considering retrospectively
Great old Richard Henry Lee.

P. 380. Inscription for . . . Dr. Southwood Smith. Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 38111, ff. 212-14. Two MS. versions and letter.

3. Giver... to] Bringer. . . into MS. 1.

'Oh how sorry I am not to be able to send the inscription final; but I cannot satisfy myself yet with the turning of the second couplet. My thoughts are constantly adverting to it, however, both as a duty and a comfort. I say to myself, when pangs press hard," Dr. Smith's couplet "; and so begin thinking on that, and rhyming.'

P. 381. To the Spirit great and good. In a letter dated 15 June 1848, among the Butterworth MSS., Vincent Novello writes to L. H. concerning the little hymn-tune which you composed in 1817 (and which I wrote down, from your singing and playing it to me). . . . There has hitherto been but one verse of the Hymn'. He transcribes this verse and the tune, leaving a blank for verses 2 and 3, which remains blank. He notes that the words were written and the melody and bass composed by Leigh Hunt.

The gentle heart that God implores,

In tears, but undismay'd, adores.
For strong and calm, not weak is he,
And smiles in his wise charity.

So like the flow'r, itself it rears,

And feels his sunshine through its tears.

P. 382. Right and Might. Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 38111, f. 420, has the following variants:

P. 383. Translations from the Greek. In the notes to 'The Book of Beginnings' (The Liberal, No. III, 1823) is the following translation from Hesiod:

With its own Muses be our strain begun,

Who hold the top of haunted Helicon,

Who make a choral altar of the mountain

To Jove, and dance about the dark-blue fountain.
With delicate feet they dance, first having been
With their sweet limbs inside of Hippocrene,

Or other sacred waters of the hill;

And then they mount its starriest pinnacle,
And weave the dance, the lovely, the desired,

Warming it more and more, because their souls are fired.
Thence rapt away, and wrought up to delight,

Veil'd by the dark, they follow through the night,
Uttering a charming voice, and singing hymns

To Jove, who hangs a shadow on his limbs.